Wishing you all a healthy and prosperous 2021!
The usual time for reflection and recap of the most popular posts and other 2020 stats of arcisfoodblog.
Luckily enough, my family remained healthy this year, and my job continued as usual. I have been working from home already since 2017, but I suddenly had my family around almost 24/7 😳. Walking our dog was a great excuse to get out of the house, so he got plenty of attention and exercise as well. I also found a couple of other projects to keep me mentally occupied during the various lockdowns, did even more cooking than normal, and tried some new stuff. Unlike the rest of the Netherlands, it was not baking my own sourdough loaves (all yeast was sold out during the first lockdown). However, I gave pickling my own gherkins a try.
From a day-to-day culinary perspective, we defaulted to our familiar comfort food recipes, and the new stuff usually ended on the site. However, I did find myself struggling with actually finishing several posts, and there are several of them lurking in my drafts, ready to be published shortly. As I amassed quite a few excellent cookbooks in 2020, I will try out loads of new dishes soon. We are definitely looking forward to getting out again for dinner as soon as possible.
This year, the traffic almost doubled again, despite publishing just more than half the number of posts. For obvious reasons, these 27 posts didn’t have any extensive travel blogs, so it was a mix of fine dining restaurant visits, and – in the absence of possibilities thereof later in the year – food boxes, and a few of my own cooking experiments. These were all vegetarian, which will most likely be the standard from now on as our household now consists of 50% vegetarians.
The boring stats themselves are now at the end of the post, so without further ado, these were the 15 most popular posts (the bulk are vegetarian ones!) on arcisfoodblog during 2020.
#1. Mustardy Cauliflower Cheese by Yotam Ottolenghi
#2: Sweet Potato Gratin by Yotam Ottolenghi
#3: Cabbage with Ginger Cream and Szechuan Chili Oil by Yotam Ottolenghi
#4: Soba noodle salad with Lime, Cardamom, and Avocado by Yotam Ottolenghi
#5: Tomato and Mozzarella Risotto by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall
#6: Shallot and Mushroom Oven Risotto by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall
#7: Mozzarella Beef Florentine by Mary Berry
#8: Mac ‘n Cheese by Marco Pierre White
#9: Lemon and Aubergine Risotto by Yotam Ottolenghi
#10: Lasagna by Marcus Wareing
#11: Quinoa Porridge with Grilled Tomatoes and Herb Oil by Yotam Ottolenghi
#12: Restaurant Oshima – Amsterdam (December 2019)
#13: ‘Caponata’ with Silken Tofu by Yotam Ottolenghi
#14: Cream of Cauliflower Soup with Beet Chips by Thomas Keller
#15: Macaroni and Cauliflower Bake With Two Cheeses by Gordon Ramsay
The Boring Stats
- Arcisfoodblog went from 35.573 views from 25.222 visitors from 128 countries in 2019 to 67.667 views from 46.851 visitors from 149 countries! Like previous years, most visitors came from the UK, USA, Australian, The Netherlands, and Canada. The list of exotic places keeps growing as well. In 2020, people from Anguilla, Nicaragua, Benin, Kyrgyzstan, and Papua New Guinea somehow ended up on my blog.
- Again, I didn’t reach my personal goal to publish every week, as only 27 posts made it to arcisfoodblog this year. Yotam Ottolenghi posts (old and new) were immensely popular this year and helped almost double the tally! The bulk of the visitors from search engines, which remained stable at 75%. The arcisfoodblog outlets (Facebook, Pinterest, WordPress, and Instagram) are prominent. Still, I also noticed that my posts are getting picked up in various recipe apps and sites, most notably Mastercook, Copy Me That, and Yummly.
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